Linda Burney (Barton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I begin by saying that Labor will be moving a second reading amendment which has been drafted and distributed in my name. I will submit the amendment to the desk once we are able to do that. Believe it or not, this was the legislation that Angus Taylor actually gave a speech for some weeks ago.

An opposition member: Was it the right speech?

That's right. I just wanted to point that out.

The amendments are really important. I note that the Prime Minister and the Minister for Families and Social Services have just completed a press conference in the Prime Minister's courtyard. They were talking about the fact that the payment for the coronavirus supplement to JobSeeker will be reduced to $150 at the end of December and remain until the end of prescribed time for JobKeeper, which of course is in March. Labor is moving amendments in the Senate today that talk very much about the JobSeeker coronavirus supplement, which we are arguing should remain at at least $250, at least until the end of the JobKeeper payment.

We are also arguing it is another missed opportunity by the government to announce a long-anticipated and anxiously awaited announcement about a permanent increase to JobSeeker. The Business Council of Australia, ACOSS and everyone in between on that spectrum have agreed that JobSeeker needs a permanent increase. Labor has consistently called on that for a very long period of time. I just want to put those things on the record this morning in terms of what Labor will be moving.

Those things have been moved in this House and were defeated by the government, but we're moving them again in the Senate today. They are modest requests and they are inevitable requests that the government is going to have to grapple with. That's why I find it so baffling that the government wouldn't grapple with those things today. However, they are clearly not going to. The clear intention is to further reduce the coronavirus supplement to JobSeeker from the current $250 to $150. Labor's argument is that this is going to create two tiers of issues that I'd like to outline through you, Mr Speaker, to the House.

The first thing it's going to do is make it incredibly difficult for the people who are currently on JobSeeker. We know that that cohort of people is going to increase, according to the government, by about 300,000 before Christmas. So it won't be 1.6 million on JobSeeker; it will actually be something around the order of 1.8 million people. The other thing, of course, is that we know a very small amount of money for people on JobSeeker pushes them into poverty. It also makes it incredibly difficult for those people to participate in the jobs market and participate in seeking employment, which is of course what we on both sides of the House all want to see them be able to do. The second reason is an economic imperative. The economic imperative is this: we know that people who are on JobSeeker, living on smaller amounts of money, are more likely to spend all of the money that they are in receipt of in the economy. At a time when we are in a very deep recession and at a time when the economy needs stimulus, it just seems incredulous to me that the amount of the stimulus package for JobSeeker would be reduced. As I said, there's still no announcement about a permanent increase.

The amendment that I will be moving to the second reading today will be what's been circulated. It goes to the points that I've actually spoken about, including the fact that many pensioners—age pensioners, people on a disability support pension and people on carer payments—have faced increased costs during the pandemic. The Leader of the Labor Party made the point that, prior to the pandemic, people didn't have to spend money on masks or sanitisers. For people, particularly those people on a disability support pension, it has been extremely difficult with additional costs as a result of the pandemic.

The minister has the power under the Social Security Act to extend the coronavirus supplement but has chosen not to. We are appealing to the better angels of the government to think about this action carefully. These requests and the amendment Labor is moving are modest. They have been thought through very carefully. We are simply saying: keep the $250 extension, in line with the JobKeeper payment, which is until the end of March; better support pensioners, including age pension, disability support pension and carer payment recipients facing increased costs in protecting their health because of the coronavirus pandemic; and announce a permanent increase to JobSeeker.

I'd like to also say that the purpose of this omnibus bill is to introduce a number of technical and administrative amendments that go to compliance and sharing of information. One of the measures in this bill is to put beyond doubt that an offence applies to Services Australia generally, not just a particular officer of the agency. This change is proposed in the context of online service delivery, where an officer might not actually be provided with information. It also requires persons served with a formal notice or summons by a royal commission to produce documents or information, or give evidence, to comply with that requirement. It will require that, even if the document or information is protected by secrecy provisions in the social security and related law. This will ensure that the Department of Social Services and related agencies will participate fully in the disability royal commission and future royal commissions. That change will put the department in the same position as any other person served with the requirement by a royal commission under the Royal Commissions Act. My speech is brief—I just wanted to make that clear.

This bill will also make a range of technical amendments to correct errors and anomalies and repeal obsolete provisions. While Labor supports these changes, all Australians will never forget the government's dismal record when it comes to social security. The government has previously sought to make it very, very painful for people who are in receipt of social security, and to make it difficult for those Australians to access income support, in the hope that they just give up.

When it comes to compliance, no Australian can or will trust this government. For three long and anxious years the government pursued tens of thousands of Australians with false and inflated debts in what has now become known as the robodebt scheme. I still remember the many anxious Australians who contacted my office, seeking help and assistance during the early stages of this fiasco.

Scott Morrison, the present Prime Minister, was the Minister for Social Services when the massive robodebt system was launched in the 2015-16 budget. It was spruiked by the government as a more cost-effective and automatic way to cross-reference ATO payment summaries with Centrelink data. It had removed human checks and balances which had previously existed to protect people from unfair debts. I remember this very well because I was the shadow minister for human services at the time.

This government deliberately designed a system that was wrong and unfair and they applied it to hundreds of thousands of people who had access to Centrelink payment all the way back to 2010. This included expanding the system for vulnerable groups and drawing in people such as students who were very likely to have uneven earnings and for whom averaging was totally unsuitable. It counted on people's fears and anxieties in the hope that these false or inflated debts would not be challenged, that people would just give to the government out of fear of further legal cost.

This particular government has had a track record of demonising Australians who have lost work and had hours slashed. It has insulted millions of Australians in very hard circumstances by implying that they choose not to work. It has sought to find new ways to demonise and humiliate Australians doing it tough. It has sought to force older Australians who have lost their jobs—people like our parents and grandparents—to take humiliating drug tests and urine tests as a condition of receiving social security. It has sought to force Australians onto the cashless debit card, preventing them from purchasing basics and essentials at affordable prices. The social services minister has previously said that Australians receiving Newstart or JobSeeker spend their money on drugs and alcohol.

In closing, I want to take a brief moment to note in this place a number of developments we've learned through Senate estimates last week in relation to our social security system. We learned that the number of people on unemployment payments will surge to 1.8 million by December. This is an increase of 300,000 people from previous projections. In four years time that figure is expected to remain at almost one million. With so many Australians on unemployment support and more expected to lose their jobs, it's perplexing how the government plans to end the corona supplement on 31 September. They've now announced, of course, as I referred to earlier, that it will be continued at a lower rate until the end of March.

For all of this demonisation of social security recipients, the government forgets that they spend at local and small businesses. It means local and small businesses have more to spend on wages and jobs. Yet, when the social services minister was asked by Senate estimates how many jobs would be lost when the government ends the coronavirus supplement, she did not know. I suspect she still doesn't know. I want to reiterate from this side of the House that our call is for the government to provide certainty for Australians on unemployment support but also for local businesses by delivering a permanent increase to JobStart.

I finish my comments by moving:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes that:

(a) since the start of the recession, the number of people relying on unemployment payments has doubled;

(b) many pensioners—including those on the Age Pension, Disability Support Pension and Carer Payment—have faced increased costs during the pandemic; and

(c) the Minister has the power under the Social Security Act to extend the Coronavirus Supplement; and

(2) calls on the Government to:

(a) extend the $250 per fortnight Coronavirus Supplement until March, in line with Jobkeeper;

(b) better support pensioners—including Age Pension, Disability Support Pension and Carer Payment recipients—facing increased costs in protecting their health because of the coronavirus pandemic; and

(c) announce a permanent increase to the base rate of the Jobseeker Payment".

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The amendment is seconded, and I reserve my right to speak.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Barton has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House, I will state the question in the form 'that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question'.

Vince Connelly (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Omnibus) Bill 2020. I'd like to make some general comments, firstly to deal with the bill itself. As the honourable shadow minister points out, this is a bill seeking to make some technical amendments to the legislation to enable a freer flow of some of the intended outputs.

I have some small degree of personal experience with respect to social services that I'd like to come to in a moment, but firstly I'd like to speak about the principles under which this government continues to operate. The first principle is that we want to support all Australians, including people who are already employed in the workforce, and we can support them by seeing them paying less tax and having a more fruitful life, better able to support their families and reach their personal objectives. We as a government are also focused on providing a safety net, and I note the Prime Minister's comments this morning in speaking about the extension of the JobSeeker payments through to March next year. The Prime Minister made the point that we've always had a safety net but that we have had to—and rightly so—expand and strengthen that safety net commensurate with the blow that coronavirus has inflicted. Right across both sides of this chamber and both houses of this place, I haven't heard anyone suggesting that it has been wrong for this government to invest in expanding and enhancing that safety net, and I know that all of us in this place feel very strongly for those people who are impacted. We know what it means to not be able to provide for one's family or, indeed, even for oneself, and that brings us to the importance, obviously, of the social safety net.

I would just like to share briefly my own personal circumstances from some time ago now. I separated from the regular Australian Army back in January 2005 and had a period of time when I was working in a family business that was commenced by my parents on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. It was very rewarding work, and I was certainly enjoying that role. My wife was originally from Western Australia, and we had always had a plan to live in Queensland for about five years and then to sort of share ourselves and the grandkids around by moving back to Western Australia. We were about a year into that plan and all seemed to be going well when my wife got information that unfortunately her mother's cancer had resurfaced and that she was given, by the doctors, about 12 months to live. This naturally came as quite a shock to us at the time. We had no immediate plans to uproot ourselves and move right across the country, but we needed to quickly formulate one. Quite understandably, my wife wanted to be with her mother for what was expected to be the last months of her life. Accordingly, quite rapidly, my wife picked up and moved with our three children across to Western Australia.

I kept going in the family business for a time, but naturally enough, and particularly at that very difficult time, I wanted to be with my wife and children and able to provide support to them. However, the challenge was that I had no employment ready to move into in Western Australia. So, naturally enough, I began looking for and applying for jobs, but there is, understandably, a bit of a challenge when you are based on one side of the country and seeking employment on the other. So I made a decision to move across to Western Australia and then to seek employment once I was already over there.

Even though I had a professional skill set, having been an officer in the Australian Army and a consultant as well, as anyone who has transitioned from one type of employment to another will know, there was still a period of challenge in finding a new role. I have to confess that the idea of relying on any form of welfare safety net had actually not even crossed my mind. It was a friend who suggested to me that I find out whether or not I was eligible for what we commonly referred to then as 'the dole'—a payment that is still sometimes referred to that way, although it has changed names a couple of times since then.

I have to confess that I felt a bit conflicted. On the one hand, I'd always been a taxpayer. I'd served as an Army officer and moved into a professional career, and I have to say that I felt an initial reluctance to reach out for financial help via government means. But then I reflected on the personal circumstances. My wife was trying to support her mother who had terminal cancer and I had three young children, for whom we were providing, and needed to continue to provide with accommodation, education and all of the other accompanying living expenses. So I made the decision to apply for the dole. Even though it was only for a very short period—because I was then able to move into part-time employment with the Army Reserve and then on to further work—I have to say that it was a very welcome filler at a time when my family and I definitely required some assistance.

This is a message to those Australians out there at the moment who are relying on a safety net. All of us seek to work hard and contribute in our communities, but all of us also recognise that there are times when that becomes challenging, either through personal illness, a change in work circumstances or an employer whose business is not as viable as it was. My personal message of encouragement is don't feel shy, don't feel nervous and don't feel guilty in relying on the safety net. But I'm sure everyone in this House would provide the encouragement that, as soon as we can, we all need to move back into the workforce whilst we are fit and able, and that is a way in which we all contribute to our great nation.

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Community Housing, Homelessness and Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the government of the day, the Morrison government is 100 per cent committed to social security. During this coronavirus period, JobKeeper, JobSeeker and all the stimulus measures that have been put in place for people right around the country have been a big benefit. As an assistant minister in this space, I've seen firsthand and had feedback about how those measures have helped people right around the country.

The Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Omnibus) Bill 2020 makes technical and administrative amendments to support service delivery and will update social services portfolio legislation to remove obsolete provisions and correct errors. The bill will amend portfolio secrecy provisions to require the Department of Social Services and Services Australia to comply with notices issued by royal commissions where the notices require the production of information protected by those secrecy provisions. The bill will update some offence provisions in the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 so that it is clear that the offences apply in circumstances where a claim is processed by an automated system within Services Australia.

Lastly, the bill makes minor technical and administrative amendments to social security law and other social services portfolio legislation, and related minor consequential amendments to other legislation. The amendments remove obsolete provisions, correct errors, update legislation and improve the operation of legislation to support service delivery.

I commend this bill to the House.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that the bill now be read a second time. To this the honourable member for Barton has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.

Question agreed to.

Original question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.